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The Baptist World Alliance and Antisemitism: An Historical

Overview
Lee B. Spitzer
Revd Dr Lee B. Spitzer recently retired as the General Secretary of the American
Baptist Churches USA and now serves as the Historian for the Baptist World Alliance
and as an Affiliate Professor of Church History for Northern Seminary, Chicago, USA.
spitzer.lee@gmail.com | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6361-3424
https://doi.org/10.25782/jebs.v21i1.704

Abstract:
This historical study investigates how the Baptist World Alliance responded to the
struggles of the Jewish people throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in
light of Baptist core convictions, as expressed in World Congress and General Council
resolutions and statements. As a collection, the past resolutions, statements and
messages of the Baptist World Alliance indicate that the Jewish people were given only
minimal attention until the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Responding to that challenge,
antisemitism as a manifestation of racism became a recurring theme in Baptist
pronouncements. After the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel, the BWA strove
to articulate a balanced and nuanced position concerning the conflict between Israel
and the Palestinians (and terrorism), while avoiding any consideration of how
antisemitism might play a role in the conflict. With the rise of twenty-first century
antisemitism, in 2019 the BWA returned to its historical roots and once again
expressed friendship with the Jewish people and opposed antisemitism.

Keywords:
antisemitism; Baptist World Alliance; Jews

The Re-Emergence of Antisemitism in the Twenty-First Century

Speaking online to the World Jewish Congress on the 82nd anniversary
of Kristallnacht, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres,
on 9 November 2020, expressed grave concern about rise of
contemporary antisemitism: ‘In recent months, a steady stream of
prejudice has continued to blight our world: anti-Semitic assaults,
harassment and vandalism; Holocaust denial; a guilty plea in a neo-Nazi
plot to blow up a synagogue […] Our world today needs a return to
reason — and a rejection of the lies and loathing that propelled the
Nazis and that fracture societies today.’ Guterres furthermore expressed
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a personal commitment to continue ‘the fight against anti-Semitism and

discrimination of every kind’.1
Contemporary manifestations of antisemitism are occurring at
an increasing rate. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed that in
2019, ‘2,107 antisemitic incidents [occurred] throughout the United
States. This is a 12% increase from the 1,879 incidents recorded in 2018
and marks the highest number on record since ADL began tracking
antisemitic incidents in 1979.’ 2
Similarly, European countries are experiencing an alarming
increase in antisemitic incidents.3 The European Jewish Congress (EJC)
worries that ‘normalization of antisemitism on the streets, online and in
mainstream society, in politics and media legitimises and encourages acts
of violence against Jewish individuals and institutions’. The EJC
provided troubling statistics confirming the rise of antisemitism:
France […] saw a 74% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2018. In Germany,
some 1,646 antisemitic acts were reported in 2018 […] marking their highest
level in the past decade […] In the United Kingdom, reported antisemitic
hate incidents hit a record high in 2018, with more than 100 recorded in every
month of the year.4

Assessing the BWA's Position on Jews and Antisemitism

In response to this rising tide of antisemitism, the Baptist World
Alliance General Council passed a resolution on 11 July 2019, rejecting
antisemitism and violent attacks against other people of religious faith.
In opposing such prejudice, the Council relied upon a consensus that
had developed over the course of a century with regard to past
manifestations of antisemitism and other forms of intolerance.

1 ‘Oppose Hatred in all Its Forms, UN Chief Urges’, UN News,

<https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1077282> [accessed 10 November 2020].
2 ‘Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2019’, Anti-Defamation League, <https://www.adl.org/

audit2019> [accessed 10 November 2020].

3 See European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Antisemitism: Overview of Antisemitic

Incidents Recorded in the European Union 2009-2019 (Luxembourg: Publications Office of the
European Union, 2020).
4 ‘Antisemitism in Europe’, European Jewish Congress, <https://eurojewcong.org/what-we-do/

combatting-antisemitism/antisemitism-in-europe/> [accessed 10 November 2020].

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Baptists historically have believed that all humans, being made

in God’s image, are to live in freedom and liberty. Individual conscience
is to be protected by soul freedom, which in the social and political
realms, means that people of all faiths (and even no faith) deserve full
political freedom and civil rights. Furthermore, racial and ethnic
prejudice, and hate are sin and must be opposed. From its earliest days,
the Baptist movement has specifically applied this principle to the
Jewish people.5
The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) has served as a prophetic
voice of conscience on behalf of most of the global Baptist family. Since
1905, when the first Congress was convened in London, to the present
time, thousands of Baptists crafted, debated and adopted resolutions,
messages, and statements that sought to express Baptist convictions in
response to a panoply of spiritual, ethical, moral, social and political
concerns. In between Congresses, the BWA’s General Council would
also meet and express judgements on pressing issues.
In Baptist polity, resolutions and other collective statements are
not binding on Baptist individuals or churches. They intend to share
wisdom and raise consciousness rather than to demand conformity or
hinder the soul freedom and responsibility of people to follow the
dictates of their own Christ-led conscience. In 1955, BWA General
Secretary Arnold T. Ohrn stated this principle well:
Further, it should be understood that an Alliance Congress, when adopting
pronouncements, can speak for itself alone. The resolutions naturally carry
great moral authority, coming as they do from a Congress so representative
of Baptists in the entire world. But no union or convention has ever
authorized a Baptist World Congress to speak on its behalf. The people who
voted for the resolutions, did so on their own behalf, not on behalf of their
churches or conventions. But these statements would never have been
proposed, much less adopted, if they were not considered indicative of the
trends of opinion within the Baptist world.6
Inevitably, the Jewish people and their religion, place in society
and struggles have come to the attention of the Baptist World Alliance.

5 Lee B. Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust: The Hand of Sincere Friendship (Valley Forge, PA:
Judson Press, 2017), pp. 19–21.
6 Arnold T. Ohrn, ed., Golden Jubilee Congress (Ninth World Congress), London, England, July 16–22,

1955 (London: The Carey Kingsgate Press, 1956), p. 6.

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This historical study will investigate how the BWA responded to the
journey of the Jewish people throughout the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries in light of Baptist core convictions, as expressed in World
Congress and General Council resolutions and statements.

Baptists and Jews Before the Rise of Nazism (1905–1928)

During its formative period (1905–1928), the BWA’s resolutions and
statements reflected a growing awareness of its responsibility to address
significant issues and challenges. In the inaugural London Congress in
1905, delegates expressed their ‘profound sympathy with sufferers [of
the] Rhondda disaster’.7 The Second Congress in Philadelphia (1911)
produced resolutions on peace and social progress,8 two themes that
would be revisited often by subsequent Congresses. In Stockholm, the
Third Congress (1923) tackled specific issues in Russia and Romania, as
well as temperance.9 Reconciliation between Baptists from World War
I combatant states was addressed, anticipating positions and actions
during the Nazi period.10
None of these statements evidenced any recognition of the Jewish
people’s plight during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Jewish communities throughout Eastern Europe suffered tremendously
during World War I, and pogroms from Poland to Russia were not
uncommon. Apparently, the BWA had not yet reached a stage of socio-
political maturity to specifically engage Jewish people or their unique
issues, despite the experience of several of its key national constituents.
One of the great Baptist apostolic leaders of the nineteenth
century, Julius Köbner — ‘a converted Jew of remarkable intellectual

7 BWA World Congress Resolution 1905.2 Disaster at Rhondda, South Wales. Details of all the
resolutions, messages, manifestos and statements referred to in this article can be found at
BaptistWorld.org/resolutions. The original source for each resolution may be found in the
Citations section of each pdf document.
8 BWA World Congress Resolution 1911.4 Regarding Peace; BWA World Congress Resolution

1911.5 Social Progress.

9 BWA World Congress Resolution 1923.8 Rumania; BWA World Congress Resolution 1923.5

Temperance; BWA World Congress Resolution 1923.6 Russian Delegates.

10 BWA World Congress Resolution 1923.3 Thanks for Help in Time of Distress; BWA World

Congress Resolution 1923.7 International Peace.

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and literary powers’11 — ministered alongside Johan Gerhard Oncken

as they and others founded Baptist movements in Germany, Denmark
and across Europe. British Baptists had been engaged in missions to the
Jewish people for decades preceding the BWA’s birth. Sébastien Fath
has documented the existence of French Baptist philo-semitism,
especially as evidenced by the ministry of Ruben Saillens.12 Southern and
Northern (now American) Baptists in the United States had interactions
with Jewish communities, initiated missions to evangelise, assimilate,
and alleviate the conditions Jewish immigrants faced, and passed
resolutions concerning Baptist-Jewish issues by the 1920s.13 In 1921,
Jacob Gartenhaus became the highest ranking Southern Baptist Jewish
disciple of Jesus, when he was called to serve as the denomination’s
director for Jewish evangelism.14
Though unaware of the central place the struggles the Jewish
people would occupy in the Baptist articulation of its core conviction of
religious and political liberty a decade later, the 1923 Congress published
the precedent that would guide their defence of Jewish rights. In a
Message to the Churches and World, the rights of Jews are implicitly
defended: ‘The State should protect the rights of all men of various
religious beliefs.’15

The BWA's Response to Hitler's Antisemitism (1933–1945)

After a year’s delay due to the global depression and concerns about
Germany’s political climate, Baptists gathered in Berlin for the Fifth
World Congress on 4–10 August 1934. Under the watchful eyes of the
Nazi regime, Baptists passed perhaps its most prophetically courageous
and significant resolution in the BWA’s history. Newspapers across the
world covered the deliberations and endorsement of Resolution 7

11 J. H. Rushbrooke, Some Chapters of European Baptist History (London: The Kingsgate Press,
1929), p. 18.
12 Sébastien Fath, ‘Evangelical Minister Ruben Saillens and Judaism’, Archives Juives, 40, no. 1

(2007): 45–57.
13 Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust, pp. 19–66.
14 See Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust, pp. 286–297, 426–432.
15 1923 BWA World Congress, Message of the Baptist World Alliance to the Baptist Brotherhood, to Other

Christian Brethren, and to the World. The message also contains the first specific reference to Jews,
in a section on stewardship and tithing.
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concerning ‘Racialism’, focused on the rights of racial groups and their

status before God.16
In a concise three paragraph argument, the resolution expressed
the core Baptist conviction that all people are made in the image of God
and thus have equal political, social, and religious rights. Quoting
Galatians 3:28, the initial paragraph endorsed an understanding of the
Church as a multi-cultural and fully inclusive racial fellowship (including
Jews) where equality and mutual reconciliation are normative:
This Congress representing the world-wide, inter-racial fellowship of
Baptists, rejoices to know that despite all differences of race, there is in Christ
an all-embracing unity, so that in Him it can be claimed with deepest truth
there is ‘neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all in all’.
The welcoming of Jews as a race into the Church implied
opposition to the emerging Nazi position that Jews should be excluded
from the Church. The second paragraph expanded the argument to the
civil realm by prophetically opposing all manifestations of ‘racial
animosity’ even outside the confines of the Church. In this regard, it
rightly went beyond the more famous Barmen Declaration that was
released in May 1934.17 The BWA’s Racialism resolution declared,
This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the
Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair
discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject
races in any part of the world.
The tripartite racial breakdown in the resolution can be found
in other Baptist statements from the United States.18 Racialism as a
social justice category addressed white majority concern for Blacks
suffering from Southern Jim Crow era discrimination and lynchings,
Jewish persecution and antisemitism primarily in Europe but also in the
United States, and discriminatory policies affecting Asians (particularly
Chinese and Japanese). Baptist opposition to ‘a every form of
oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews’ was immediately

16 BWA World Congress Resolution 1934.7 Racialism.

17 The text of the Barmen Declaration in English can be found in Hubert G. Locke, ed., The
Church Confronts the Nazis: Barmen Then and Now (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1984),
pp. 19-25.
18 See Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust, pp. 143–227, 272–340, 350–370.
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understood as a rebuke to the Nazi antisemitic restrictions on Jewish

freedoms, based on the spiritual principle of the equality of all people
under God, which trumps all nationalistic considerations.
The final paragraph invoked a now forgotten core conviction,
embraced not just by Baptists, concerning the ‘personality’ of human
beings:
This Congress urges the promotion of Christian teaching concerning respect
for human personality regardless of race, and as the surest means of
advancing the true brotherhood of all people, urges the active propagation
of the Gospel of Christ throughout the World.
Employed in a pre-psychological sense, personality referred to the
spiritual essence of human beings. All people, by virtue of possessing a
soul, were made in God’s image and thus possessed dignity and
immeasurable worth; therefore the common possession of personality
promoted the unity (‘brotherhood’) of the human race. By asserting that
Jews, Blacks and Asians possessed personality, the resolution theologically
rejected the Nazi antisemitic devaluation of the Jews as a supposedly
inferior race. There are no inferior races, the Baptists declared in Berlin.
Black Baptist leaders attending the 1934 Congress not only
pressed for the inclusion of the phrase ‘coloured people’ but further
urged the BWA to convene its next Congress in the heart of the
American South, so that oppressed Black people could enjoy the same
support as the German Jews received. With National, Southern and
Northern Baptist support, the 1939 World Congress was held in Atlanta,
Georgia, on 22–28 July. This Sixth Congress did pass a resolution on
Racialism, which was in reality merely a reprinting of the original 1934
resolution with a preface: ‘The Congress finds that the strong and
unwavering convictions which govern the attitude and policy of the
Baptist World Alliance are clearly and adequately expressed in the
Resolution adopted by the Fifth World Congress, which met in Berlin
in 1934. It therefore solemnly reaffirms what was then stated […].’ The
text of the original resolution was then quoted in full.19
The resolution echoed General Secretary J. H. Rushbrooke’s
somewhat defensive response to criticism of the BWA’s rather

19 BWA World Congress Resolution 1939.5 Racialism.

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lacklustre response to ongoing Nazi antisemitism in the years following

the 1934 Congress and in particular, the travesty of Kristallnacht in
November 1938.20 There was nothing new in the 1939 resolution; it
merely asserted that the Baptist movement’s position on antisemitism
had not changed. Most notably absent was any report of subsequent
actions taken on behalf of the suffering German Jewish population.
The historical legacy of the 1939 Congress concerning
antisemitism is accordingly mixed. The peacemaking impulses of
Rushbrooke constrained the Congress from breaking new ground in
opposing antisemitism in general or specifically criticising Nazi policies
and actions against the Jews. Despite a vociferous public debate on
totalitarianism and democracy (where the latter was championed by the
British Baptist leader M. E. Aubrey), the German Baptist leadership’s
complicity with the regime was not officially rebuked. While personally
opposing Hitler, Rushbrooke consistently sought to maintain the unity
of the global Baptist fellowship despite political divisions, even after the
Second World War broke out on 1 September 1939.

The Holocaust, Antisemitism and Genocide (1947–1965)

Copenhagen 1947
There were no World Congresses during the Second World War.
Europe’s devastation led to the BWA’s post-war efforts to aid ailing
Baptist national conventions and assist Baptist displaced persons.
Accordingly, a European venue for the next Congress made a great deal
of sense. In 1947, Baptists travelled to Copenhagen for its Seventh
World Congress. The 1947 Congress, in contrast to its predecessor, not
only revisited the topics raised by the 1934 Racialism resolution, but also

20A similar response by the BWA Executive Committee’s Administrative Subcommittee two
weeks after Kristallnacht merely recalled the 1934 resolution and stated that it ‘offers a clear
description of the attitude of the Alliance’. Unlike the Congress, the committee also asked
Baptist entities to ‘take steps to furnish all possible assistance to those who are the victims of
anti-Semitic action’. See BWA Administrative Sub-Committee Meeting Minutes 1938-11-28,
Section 8, ‘Anti-Semitism’, in Baptist World Alliance Minutes of the Administrative Sub-Committee
Meeting on Monday, 28th November, 1938 at the Offices of the Alliance, London (London: Baptist World
Alliance, 1938), pp. 8–9.
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expanded on them in light of the intervening thirteen years in two

historically significant resolutions.
The first resolution focused on ‘Race Relations’. It confessed
that Baptists had ‘tried to ignore, evade, and attempt by platitudes to
solve this most grave problem’, and that these avoidance strategies
needed to be replaced by a deeper ‘appreciation for the ideals,
aspirations, and personalities of all races’. In order to ‘build a Christian
order and equality for all children of men’, the resolution rejected ‘un-
Christian practices and abuses of people, such as lynchings, race
extermination, economic and racial discrimination, unfair employment
practices, and denial of political rights [which] are contrary to the
principles of Christianity’.21 The term ‘race extermination’ no doubt
included the Jewish persecution in Europe.
A second resolution concentrated Baptist attention on the
Holocaust-era Jewish experience.22 Composed originally by Jacob
Gartenhaus, it forthrightly acknowledged
the unprecedented suffering through which the people of Israel have passed
during recent years, millions of them being exterminated by the most
inhuman means; aware also that these sufferings are not yet at an end, but
that hundreds of thousands are still in concentration camps or wandering
homeless from land to land.
The Holocaust was summarised in honest terms and the ongoing post-
war plight of Jewish refugees was not denied. The root cause of this
‘unprecedented suffering’ — prejudice against Jews — was still a threat.
The statement asserted that ‘the poisonous propaganda and destructive
designs of anti-Semitism are still at work in many lands’, eliciting an
expression of Baptist ‘sorrow and shame that such conditions prevail’.
Reflecting Gartenhaus’s perspective, the resolution affirmed
Jesus’s Jewish background and urged Baptists to ‘do everything in their
power to alleviate the sufferings of the Jews’, while also ‘supporting
missionary work among the Jews’.23 Countries were asked to open their

21 BWA World Congress Resolution 1947.2 Race Relations.

22 BWA World Congress Resolution 1947.3 Concerning the Jews.
23 Gartenhaus facilitated a conference ‘to consider our obligation to preach the Gospel to the

Jews’ on July 30; see Walter O. Lewis, ed., Seventh Baptist World Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, July
29–August 3, 1947 (London: The Carey Kingsgate Press, 1948), p. 62.
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borders to ‘the homeless and oppressed refugees’, which in context

included Baptist displaced persons as well as Jews.24
Not all of the resolution’s requests represented Gartenhaus’s
personal views or expressed pro-Jewish sentiment. It advised ‘Jewry
everywhere to refrain from provocative acts and to restrain those among
them who would resort to violence’. This was a reaction against the King
David Hotel bombing on 22 July 1946 and other violent acts against
British rule. The resolution was silent regarding the Jewish aspirations
for a territorial homeland, perhaps in deference to British sensibilities
and an ambivalence surrounding the creation of an independent Israel
within certain Baptist missionary circles.
On the closing day of the Congress, a ‘Manifesto on Religious
Freedom’ was adopted and served as the meeting’s message to the global
family. It asserted, ‘Since the foundation of all our freedoms is the
dignity of man created in the likeness of the eternal God, it is our first
duty to extend the rights of conscience to all people, irrespective of their
race, colour, sex, or religion (or lack of religion).’25 Outlasting Nazism,
and presently facing the challenge of Communism in Eastern Europe
and Asia, Baptists in Copenhagen reiterated historic Baptist core
convictions on human freedom, which formed the theological basis for
their support both of oppressed Blacks and surviving Jews, as well as
for all other minorities around the world.
Cleveland 1950
Meeting in the American heartland city of Cleveland, the 1950 Congress
symbolised the ascendency of the American denominations within the
BWA. With the destruction of the BWA’s London headquarters during
the war, the offices of the BWA were relocated to Washington, DC. The
East-West (communist/democratic) bifurcation of the political world
led Baptists to place their faith in the mediatorial work of the newly
established United Nations, and this was reflected in the Cleveland
resolutions.

24See BWA World Congress Resolution 1947.4 Displaced Persons.

25This statement comes in the introduction to the 1947 BWA World Congress Manifesto on
Religious Freedom.
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Post-war reflection on the scope and horrific nature of the

brutality of the Holocaust inspired efforts to declare the intentional
destruction of a people illicit under international law. The 1950
Congress supportively pointed to the work of the UN, which adopted
the term ‘genocide’ to denote such efforts: ‘Genocide is a denial of the
right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of
the right to live of individual human beings.’26
Although the Holocaust lay at the heart of the matter
(historically speaking), the Baptist statement followed the generalising
principle of the UN and did not specifically mention Jews; instead, it
asserted that ‘during the last war certain of the nations were guilty of
this inhuman practice, using it both against minorities within their own
borders as well as against conquered peoples and prisoners of war’.
Since ‘Christian conscience has been outraged by such treatment of
human beings’, the Congress urged governments to ratify the Genocide
Convention (six more affirmative votes were needed).
In 2021, the identification of the Jewish people as a distinct race
is a controversial and disputable notion, but in the early to mid-twentieth
century the concept was commonplace both in Baptist thinking and the
wider social milieu.27 Antisemitism was a manifestation of racial
discrimination as well as a religious freedom issue. This dual manner of
treating the socio-political challenges confronting the Jewish people was
illustrated by the actions taken by the Eighth World Congress in 1950.
The Congress’s resolution on ‘Race Relations’ acknowledged its
indebtedness to the resolutions published by earlier Congresses in 1934,
1939 and 1947 that ‘condemned racial discrimination’.28 However, while
reiterating the traditional trinitarian racial categories of Jew, American
Black and Asian peoples, the proclamation broke new ground by
referencing additional struggles: ‘This problem manifests itself in several
unchristian ways such as discrimination against Jews in many lands, the
Apartheid Movement in South Africa, the discrimination against

26 BWA World Congress Resolution 1950.3 Genocide.

27 The identification of Jews as racially white was largely the result of the post-war successful
assimilation of Jews into the American middle class. See Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness:
Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
28 BWA World Congress Resolution 1950.4 Race Relations.
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Orientals and Mexicans in some areas, and the segregation by law of

Negroes in the United States; […].’ The resolution declared that
‘discrimination and segregation based on religion, race, color and culture
are ethically and morally indefensible and contrary to the gospel of
Christ and the principle of freedom for which Baptists stand’, and so
called on Baptists to reject ‘racial and cultural prejudice’.
Jews as adherents of a religion are specifically mentioned in the
Congress’s Manifesto regarding ‘Religious Freedom’. Reaffirming the
historic Baptist core conviction on religious liberty and freedom for all
people, and linking it to the ‘the principles of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights’, the Manifesto specifically affirmed that state
churches should not restrict the religious liberty of ‘Jews and members
of other religious groups’.29
The 1950 Congress once again neglected to discuss the birth of
an independent Jewish state. Even though Israel was founded as a
technically secular homeland for the Jewish people, no one could deny
its spiritual implications for many Jews (and Christians). Many Baptists,
especially those influenced by evangelical and prophecy-centred
dispensational movements, were supportive of Israel’s rebirth.30
Furthermore, the BWA was obviously aware that the President of the
United States, Harry S. Truman — a Baptist — had played a key role in
promoting global recognition of Israel’s right to exist as an independent
nation.31
Racial Inequality (1955–1965)
Nevertheless, with Europe’s Jewish refugee crisis resolved, and as
American Jews left their immigrant past behind them and successfully
became established within the middle class, the 1950 Congress
resolution on Genocide effectively closed the chapter on Baptists, Jews
and the Holocaust. As the memory of the Holocaust faded, new
problems, such as the nuclear arms race, the Cold War, and race

29 1950 BWA World Congress Manifesto—Mid-Century Call to Religious Freedom, ‘Appeal to Action’
section.
30 See Yaakov Ariel, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York

University Press, 2013), pp. 83–110, 171–13; Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust, pp. 236–239.
31 See Michael J. Devine, ed., Harry S. Truman, the State of Israel, and the Quest for Peace in the Middle

East (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2009).

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inequality, would trouble Baptists. Specific references to antisemitism

became less common. For example, the 1955 Resolution on ‘Race
Relations’ reaffirmed that in ‘1934, 1939, 1947 and 1950’, the BWA had
‘already declared itself unalterably opposed to racial discrimination in
every form’,32 but antisemitism was not specifically mentioned. In a
further declaration, the Congress similarly generically affirmed that ‘the
right to be free is a gift from God to all men of whatever race’. 33
In 1960, Baptists from around the globe travelled to Rio de
Janeiro for the first World Congress held in South America. The
delegates recalled that their 1934 resolution on Racialism proclaimed
that Jesus ‘condemned every form of oppression or unfair
discrimination toward the Jews, toward colored people, or toward
subject races’ and expressed ‘gratitude to God for the measure of
progress which has been made in the improvement of race relations’.
Looking to the present and future, the focus of this Congress’s concern
— ‘racial segregation and the caste system’ (American segregation and
probably South African apartheid34) — may have signalled a belief that
antisemitism was no longer a leading manifestation of racism.35
The trend away from focusing on antisemitism as a specific and
ongoing manifestation of racism continued at the 1965 Congress in
Miami Beach (a city with a significant Jewish population). In just one
generic sentence, delegates affirmed ‘the brotherhood of all Christians
and the equality of all men under God, regardless of race or social
position’.36 Similarly, the 1965 Manifesto thanked God for ‘the decrease
of discrimination because of race or creed’.37

32 BWA World Congress Resolution 1955.2 Race Relations.

33 1955 BWA World Congress Golden Jubilee Declaration on Religious Liberty, ‘Our Jubilee
Declaration’ section
34 The Fifteenth Congress in 1985 passed a detailed repudiation of apartheid in 1985; see BWA

World Congress Resolution 1985.2 Racism in General and Apartheid in Particular.

35 BWA World Congress Resolution 1960.1 Race Relations.
36 BWA World Congress Resolution 1965.2 Brotherhood and Equality.
37 1965 BWA World Congress Manifesto on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
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Jews, Israel and the Middle East

Looking at the resolutions of the Tenth and Eleventh BWA Congresses,
a Baptist could not be faulted for hoping that antisemitism was no
longer a significant contemporary problem and that the Jewish state of
Israel was not a pressing subject for critical reflection. That would
change with the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and its Arab
neighbours on 5 June 1967.
Peace and Conflict Resolution (1967–1981)
The Six Day War fundamentally transformed the political dynamics of
the Middle East. Israel emerged as a victorious and militarily strong
national power, while its conquest of territory owned by Syria (the
Golan Heights), Jordan (the West Bank) and Egypt (Sinai and Gaza)
created a new reality that continues to be controversial to this present
day.
Meeting less than two months after the conclusion of the Six
Day War, the BWA Executive Committee merely referred to the
region’s ‘continuing tension’.38 Similarly, in 1968 and 1969, the
Executive Committee noted conflicts around the world, with the Middle
East being but one example.39
Although not cited by name, Israel and its neighbours received
attention in the resolution on ‘World Peace and Reconciliation’, passed
by the Twelfth World Congress in 1970: ‘We cry out against the
continued tragedy of the conflicts in Indochina and the Middle East and
urge that the killing be stopped.’40 Baptists looked to the United Nations
to facilitate peace negotiations in trouble spots such as the Middle East.
Another resolution continued the practice of recalling the
sequence of statements against racism initiated by the foundational 1934
resolution, and also furthered the more recent strategy of avoiding
specific mention of antisemitism:

38 BWA Executive Committee Resolution 1967.5 Message to Baptist Churches Throughout the World.
39 BWA Executive Committee Resolution 1968.1 Peace; BWA Executive Committee Resolution
1969.6 Peace.
40 BWA World Congress Resolution 1970.1 World Peace and Reconciliation.
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At Berlin in 1934, at Atlanta in 1939, at Copenhagen in 1947, at Cleveland in

1950, at London in 1955, at Rio de Janeiro in 1960, and at Miami Beach in
1965 the Baptist World Alliance registered its opposition to racial
discrimination and its parent, racism, which is the evil of looking at men in
terms of their differences of color or culture rather than their oneness as
children of God. The fact that here again in Tokyo in 1970 we are obliged to
address ourselves to this evil is evidence of how stubborn and deeply
ingrained this practice is in human thought and action […] We Baptists
lament the presence of and repent for the sins of racism that have existed,
[…] We pledge ourselves to labor within our own churches, conventions, and
unions and also in the whole of society for the total elimination of every
vestige of racism and those discriminations and oppressions which are its
offsprings.41
In 1975, both trends continued as the Thirteenth Congress
published a restatement of Baptist core convictions concerning religious
freedom, human rights, peacemaking and morality. While opposing
‘violence and armed conflict persisting in many parts of the world’,
neither the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 nor the Vietnam War
was named. The resolution also affirmed that ‘the right to maintain
cultural identity includes the rights of racial, ethnic, and national groups
to maintain their self-determined identities. We affirm the principles set
forth in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’42
It is unclear if the Resolution intended to be applied to the Palestinian
gains in the United Nations and the rise of the PLO as their
representative in 1974–1975.
The Baptists’ reliance on the United Nations to mediate
conflicts was restated in 1980.43 The plight of Vietnamese boat people
as well as that of Palestinians in refugee camps may have been in mind
when the 1980 Congress implored unnamed governments to ‘act with
humanitarian concern towards persons seeking shelter as a result of
personal dispossession or exclusion from their own nations’.44

41 BWA World Congress Resolution 1970.2 Reconciliation and Racial Discrimination; see also BWA
General Council Resolution 1981.1 United Nations Declaration Concerning Religious ‘Intolerance and
Discrimination’, and BWA General Council Resolution 1982.3 Fundamental Freedoms.
42 BWA World Congress Resolution 1975.1 Religious Liberty.
43 BWA World Congress Resolution 1980.4 World Peace and Disarmament. This was followed up

by BWA General Council Resolution 1984.1 Nuclear Arms, which stated: ‘WE SUPPORT the
proposal of non-governmental organizations represented at the United Nations in calling for a
peace conference for the Middle East, to which all parties to the conflicts should be invited.’
44 BWA World Congress Resolution 1980.6 Refugees.
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Meeting in between Congresses, the Baptist World Alliance’s

General Council penned some 215 resolutions and statements between
1981 and 2020. During these four decades, several expressed the
concern Baptists felt toward the Israeli-Arab conflict. Continuing the
trend of not explicitly mentioning Israel by name, the Council in 1981
presented an even-handed but general statement summarising ‘its
concern and position regarding multiple but interrelated crises in the
Near and Middle East in the following expressions’:
1. We express our profound concern regarding the blatant disregard for
human rights, civil liberties and national self-determination.
2. We express our resistance to the pattern whereby powers outside the Near
and Middle East manipulate the geo-political situation for national advantage.
3. We express our commitment to the pursuit of peace, liberty and social
justice simultaneously.
4. We call on Baptists in every land to pray for peace in the Near and Middle
East.45
Terrorism (1982–1989)
As acts of Palestinian terrorism became more common, the BWA
sought to oppose terroristic violence without appearing to explicitly
support Israel. Perhaps unintentionally, this quest for balance enabled
the BWA to avoid the issue of whether attacks against Israeli and other
Jews constituted a manifestation of antisemitism.
In 1982, the General Council noted its ‘concern over acts of
terrorism, assassinations, and the taking of hostages all of which have
posed potential threats to peace and stability, as well as being
unconscionable assaults upon the individuals concerned’.46 In like
manner, the Fifteenth World Congress in Los Angeles in 1985 expressed
opposition to terrorism, naming specific forms of violence it abhorred,
including ‘indiscriminate attacks against civilians through bombing of
airplanes, hijacking, kidnapping, harassment and murder’. However,

45 BWA General Council Resolution 1981.4 Crisis in the Near and Middle East. This balance may
reflect internal division within the BWA. On the one hand, the Southern Baptist Convention
was pro-Israel, while the three small Baptist conventions of Israel, Jordan and Lebanon (with a
total membership in 1980 of 25 churches and 1,308 members) would have been more
sympathetic with Arab and Palestinian concerns.
46 BWA General Council Resolution 1982.6 Peace and Peaceful Change.
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even while acknowledging that some forms of terrorism may have

religious origins, it framed the problem in political terms and did not
identify Jews as specific victims of terrorist attacks: ‘We deplore the
destruction of human life and the deliberate infliction of human
suffering upon innocent people.’47
Hostage taking had been a feature of Palestinian insurgency
since 1968, when an Israeli El Al plane was hijacked and sixteen people
were held hostage. This was followed up by the 1972 Munich Olympics
attack on Israeli athletes. In 1985, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro
cruise liner by the PLO off the coast of Egypt, which featured the
execution of a disabled American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, was notorious.
During its 1987 session, the BWA General Council specifically
addressed this issue. Affirming the value of human life and rejecting
turning people into ‘commodities for bargaining’, the Council blandly
noted that hostage taking ‘feeds a cycle of hostility and makes a mutual
desire for peace, justice and reconciliation more difficult to achieve’. It
urged Baptists to pray for hostages and ‘the resolution of the problems
leading to violence’, advised member unions to ‘appeal through the
media to persons of good will to reject violent means of securing good
purposes’, and curiously appealed to hostage takers to treat their
prisoners in a ‘just and humane way’.48
In two other resolutions, the 1987 Council praised host country
Jordan for practising ‘religious toleration’ and prayed that the country
might serve as ‘an instrument of just and lasting peace in the Middle
East’.49 The Council specifically thanked Marwan Doudin, Jordanian
Minister of Occupied Territory Affairs — namely, the Israeli held West
Bank.50
Even though Israel celebrated its fortieth anniversary in May
1988, the General Council did not see fit to congratulate or even
acknowledge the anniversary. Instead, it reaffirmed its commitment to
a cessation of ‘hostilities between and within countries in the Middle

47 BWA World Congress Resolution 1985.6 Terrorism.

48 BWA General Council Resolution 1987.1 Hostages.
49 BWA General Council Resolution 1987.2 Religious and Racial Minorities.
50 BWA General Council Resolution 1987.6 Appreciation. See also
<http://www.marwandudin.org> [last accessed 5 March 2020].
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East’.51 The next year, it succinctly chose to ‘deplore every incident in

which persons and groups are subjected to actions which contradict the
divine intention for personhood and human dignity, in particular,
human rights abuses in the Middle East’.52
Israel and the Palestinians (1990–2013)
The 1990s were a period of intense peace negotiations between Israel
and the Palestinians. The Bush and Clinton administrations repeatedly
sought to provide opportunities for Israel and the Palestinians to
reconcile and end their hostilities, based on what became known as the
‘two state solution’. There were some notable successes, such as the
Oslo Accords (1993, 1995) and a peace treaty between Israel and Jordon
(1994).
Throughout the decade, the BWA General Council repeatedly
commented on the peace process in the absence of new World Congress
resolutions. Following the Gulf War and Desert Storm (August 1990–
February 1991), the Council urged Baptists to ‘pray unceasingly and to
work earnestly for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and not
least for a strong and mutual commitment on the part of Israel and the
neighboring states to find a solution to the situation of the Palestinian
people’.53 This appears to be the first time Israel is specifically
mentioned as a country in a BWA resolution.54
In 1994, the General Council approvingly recognised the 1993
Oslo ‘accords between the Israelis and Palestinians’.55 Three years later,
the Council reaffirmed support for the Oslo peace process and for the
mediation efforts of the United Nations.56 However, the Camp David
Summit in July 2000 was not a success and its failure threw the Oslo
process into a tailspin. The second Palestinian Intifada began in
September 2000 and lasted for almost five years. In 2002, the General

51 BWA General Council Resolution 1988.5 Peacemaking.

52 BWA General Council Resolution 1989.2 Human Rights.
53 BWA General Council Resolution 1991.3 Middle East Situation.
54 The two references to Israel in Gartenhaus’s 1947 resolution were religious in nature, not

political. Jesus was a ‘Child of Israel’, or in another words a Jew; the Great Commission applies
to sharing the gospel with ‘the people of Israel’. (BWA World Congress Resolution 1947.3
Concerning the Jews.)
55 BWA General Council Resolution 1994.5 The Ministry of Reconciliation.
56 BWA General Council Resolution 1997.2 Peace in the Middle East.
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Council passed a balanced and carefully worded resolution which, while

deploring ‘violence’, did not condemn either Palestinian terrorism or
Israeli military activity. It merely supported ‘all efforts to make peace
between Israelis and Palestinians and to promote initiatives between
Christians, Jews and Moslems in the common concern for peace’.57 A
year later, Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli leader to be mentioned
in a BWA resolution that lent support to President Bush’s ‘Road Map
to Peace’. It praised the ‘cooperation of the Israeli and Palestinian
Governmental Authorities’ in working ‘toward the cessation of violence
and a just and lasting peace for all peoples’.58
The Arab Spring, with its pro-democratic aspirations, erupted in
December 2010 in Tunisia and spread to Egypt by February 2011. In
July 2011, the Council responded with a resolution that covered the
protests, the status of Middle Eastern Christians, violence, religious
freedom, the plight of refugees and Baptist-Muslim dialogue. The
resolution also included a statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
that, as was the standard approach, sought to balance the perspectives
of both parties. Baptists were asked to ‘work and pray for a just
resolution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, one that balances
Israel’s need for security with an end to oppressive policies inflicted on
the Palestinian people, and to be a strong support to the Israeli (Arab)
and Palestinian Baptist Churches in the many pressures and challenges
that they face’.59
Within two years, it became clear that many of the aspirations
of the Arab Spring movement would not be actualised, and in fact,
political conditions deteriorated in several countries impacted by the
upheavals. In July 2013, the General Council expressed concern for ‘an
increase in the persecution of minorities, including Christians’ and
condemned ‘attacks by Islamic extremists’.60 Although United States
Secretary of State John Kerry was preparing to initiate a new round of

57 BWA General Council Resolution 2002.5 The Middle East.

58 BWA General Council Resolution 2003.5 Middle East.
59 BWA General Council Resolution 2011.4 Resolution on the Middle East.
60 BWA General Council Resolution 2013.10 Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa. The

Council also remembered English Anabaptist Richard Overton who ‘argued for religious liberty
for Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims’ (BWA General Council Resolution 2013.15
Human Rights Based on the Work of Anabaptist Richard Overton.).
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peace talks later in the month, Israel was not mentioned in this
resolution.

Confronting Contemporary Antisemitism and Prejudice

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, signalling the collapse of the
Soviet Union and its Eastern European alliance. At the same time,
actions by both the United States and Soviet Union greatly impacted the
lives of Soviet Jews. In October 1989, the Bush Administration capped
Soviet refugee immigration at 50,000 applicants (it had previously been
unlimited), while ‘events in the Soviet Union threatened the stability of
the country, and rumours of pogroms spread. Soviet Jews and their
family members, both Jewish and Gentile, flocked to Israel in
unprecedented numbers: 181,759 in 1990.’61 The cover of the 7 May
1990 issue of Newsweek warned of ‘The Long Shadow — New Fears of
Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’.
On 14 May 1990, The New York Times reported on massive
protests against antisemitism in France sparked by the desecration of
thirty-four graves in Carpantras and other acts of vandalism. The French
Government ‘blamed the extreme rightist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and
his National Front for inciting racial hatred by calling for the eviction of
3.4 million Arab immigrants and for regularly sniping at France's
700,000 Jews’.62 The Associated Press noted Le Pen’s antisemitism and
indicated that about 200,000 French protesters had demonstrated
against antisemitism, ‘including Holocaust survivors and President
Francois Mitterrand’.63

61 United Nations High Commission for Refugees gives this information at

<https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a7fd8.html>, citing from a document prepared by the
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Jews from the Soviet Union (2 November, 1994),
paragraph 1 [accessed 12 November 2020]. Regarding the plight of Soviet Jews in this period,
see Zvi Gitelman, ‘Glasnost, Perestroika and Antisemitism’, Foreign Policy 70, no. 2 (Spring 1991):
141–159.
62 Alan Riding, ‘Thousands in France Rally Against Anti-Semitism’, The New York Times (May

14, 1990), <https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/14/world/thousands-in-france-rally-against-

anti-semitism.html> [accessed 12 November 2020] (p. 3).
63 Patrick McDowell, ‘200,000 March in Anti-Semitism Demonstration in Paris’, The Associated

Press (May 14, 1990), <https://apnews.com/article/e6c96df3bfbabcdc4f8f120642de92de>

[accessed 12 November 2020].
 J E B S 2 1 : 1 ( 2 0 2 1 ) | 197

Meeting in Seoul, South Korea in August 1990, the BWA

expressed its concern over the wave of antisemitism the world was
experiencing. Referencing the Berlin Wall’s collapse,64 the resolution on
‘Religious Persecution’ applauded new ‘opportunities of freedom’ and
then specifically condemned antisemitism: ‘We particularly decry the use
of religion to justify intolerance and persecution; and further we are
appalled that anti-Semitic practices and slogans have again surfaced. We
therefore declare our opposition to all forms of religious intolerance and
persecution.’65 This was the first specific mention of antisemitism by a
World Congress since Rio de Janeiro in 1960, and it would turn out to
be the last time a World Congress would address antisemitism by name
in resolution form.
In 2008, the BWA revisited the horror of the Holocaust for the
first time since 1950 in a General Council resolution focused on the
Italian Government’s efforts to fingerprint Roma people. Following
trends in Holocaust research that sought to recognise non-Jewish
victims, the resolution ‘recalls that the Roma people were targeted and
persecuted many times in history leading to the genocide perpetrated
against them by the Nazi regime’. Although the statement maintained
that Baptists ‘stand against all forms of discrimination and for the
safeguarding of the dignity and human rights of all human beings’,66 the
centrality of Jewish suffering under the Nazis and antisemitism were not
specifically recalled.
In July 2019, the General Council considered a draft resolution
on ‘Current Manifestations of Anti-Semitism and Religious
Intolerance’.67 The Resolutions Committee expanded its scope to
include intolerance and violence against persecuted Muslims in
Myanmar and China as well as Christians in Nigeria, Cameroon and
India. The final version, renamed ‘Current Manifestations of Religious

64 ‘The world has recently experienced the blessing of the destruction of walls and divisive
restrictions which have separated nations and families’ (BWA World Congress Resolution
1990.3 Religious Persecution).
65 BWA World Congress Resolution 1990.3 Religious Persecution.
66 BWA General Council Resolution 2008.8 Involuntary Fingerprinting of Roma People in Italy.
67 For the purposes of full disclosure, the author of this article drafted the submitted proposed

statement.
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Intolerance and Religiously-Motivated Violence’,68 retained most of the

text of the original draft in regards to antisemitism. Citing antisemitic
violent ‘attacks against synagogues in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA;
and Poway, California, USA’, the resolution lamented ‘the well-
documented rise of anti-Semitism around the world, for instance the
marked increase in anti-Semitic crimes in western and central Europe’.
The 2019 resolution quoted in full the text of the 1934 World
Congress’s protest against Hitler’s antisemitism. The extended quote
was not gratuitous. It signalled that the BWA possessed a historically
consistent tradition of opposing antisemitism, going as far back as the
Nazi period. The Resolutions Committee also added a reference to the
very beginnings of the Baptist movement, citing Thomas Helwys who,
‘in 1612, made his famous plea for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to be
allowed to worship in freedom and so live at peace together in the same
geographical space’. Freedom for people of all faiths constituted a
fundamental Baptist core conviction, thus necessitating unequivocal
opposition to antisemitism, no matter what its origin or form.

The BWA and the Jewish People: Past, Present and Future
As a collection, the past resolutions, statements and messages of the
Baptist World Alliance indicate that the Jewish people were given only
minimal attention until the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Responding to
that challenge, antisemitism as a manifestation of racism became a
recurring theme in Baptist pronouncements. After the Holocaust and
the establishment of Israel, the BWA strove to articulate a balanced and
nuanced position concerning the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians (and terrorism), while avoiding any consideration of how
antisemitism might play a role in the conflict. With the rise of twenty-
first century antisemitism, in 2019 the BWA returned to its historical
roots and once again expressed friendship with the Jewish people and
opposed antisemitism.

68 BWA General Council Resolution 2019.2 Current Manifestations of Religious Intolerance and
Religiously-Motivated Violence.
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The 2019 General Council Resolution encouraged Baptists to

demonstrate their opposition to antisemitism and other forms of
prejudice by expressing ‘solidarity and sympathy’ with people of other
religions and by ‘living in peace with everyone’. Beyond mere acceptance
or tolerance, the resolution furthermore called upon ‘BWA member
bodies to offer the hand of sincere friendship to our neighbors of other
faiths, as an expression of biblical teaching that all human beings are
made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and as a prophetic response
of God’s love against all manifestations of terrorism, violence, and
religious intolerance (Romans 12:21)’. It was J. H. Rushbrooke, as BWA
General Secretary, who initially offered the Baptists’ ‘hand of sincere
friendship’ to the Jewish world at a meeting in London in April 1935.
Rushbrooke linked opposition to antisemitism with Baptist friendship
to the Jewish people during their dark night:
When […] as spokesman of my own communion at Berlin, I condemned in
that city ‘the placing of a stamp of inferiority upon an entire race,’ it was not
merely as a Baptist, but in the name of all instructed Christians that I spoke,
and when our Congress passed its resolution—unanimously, in Berlin—
deploring and condemning ‘as a violation of God the Heavenly Father all
racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination
towards the Jews,’ we expressed a judgment that, while we would apply it to
men of every race, carries with it that special application a unique warmth of
sympathy and a unique strength of just resentment, evoked by the knowledge
of recent and continuing oppression and suffering. To my Jewish brothers
and sisters under such conditions I extend the hand of sincere friendship. 69
In 2021 (and beyond), how might Baptists ‘extend the hand of
sincere friendship’ to Jews in their neighbourhoods, countries and
across the globe? Here are three suggestions, among the many available
options.
First, the Baptist world might consider studying and endorsing
the working definition of antisemitism created by the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: ‘Antisemitism is a certain perception
of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and
physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or
non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish

69 Original quote from ‘The Evils of Arrogant Nationalism’, The Jewish Chronicle (April 4, 1935),
p. 30, cited in Spitzer, Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust, p. 3.
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community institutions and religious facilities.’70 As of the writing of this

paper, thirty-four countries, along with dozens of municipalities,
universities and organisations have endorsed the legally non-binding
working definition.
Although the BWA has an admirable track record of opposing
antisemitism, its resolutions do not provide an adequate definition of
the term or its features. The IHRA definition could be discussed and
endorsed by local Baptist churches, denominational judicatories and
ministries. The IHRA website suggests examples of antisemitism that
are worthy of reflection by Baptists. Some Baptists may find a few of
the examples to be controversial, such as those regarding criticism of
Israel. Baptists are not strangers to political differences, and the BWA
has often been a forum where thorny issues have been addressed.
Second, the Baptist world, on all of its levels of life, might seek
to be more intentional in expressing friendship by relating to the Jewish
community through activities such as faith-based dialogues, social
gatherings and cooperative endeavours that express both communities’
justice values. In 1935, Rushbrooke declared that Baptists were in the
Jews’ debt because of their gift of the Jewish Scriptures; serious joint
study of the Torah, Writings and Prophets could serve to build lasting
bridges of understanding and deeper relationships between Baptists and
Jews.71
Third, the 100th anniversary of the Fifth World Congress and
its Racialism resolution will be in 2034. This might be a most appropriate
occasion to bring Jewish and Baptist communities together for a
celebratory reflection and forward-looking conversation.

70 The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,

<https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-
definition-antisemitism?focus=antisemitismandholocaustdenial> [accessed 12 November
2020].
71 A precedent for this took place two decades ago. A group of Jewish Scholars published Dabru

Emet, to which American Baptists responded. See <https://www.baptistholocauststudies.org/

dabru-emet.> [accessed 12 November 2020].